“Mypeople, I call them, seem to have been priced out of our state, as taxes and the cost of energy escalates and real estate prices soar.”

********

I wrote a commentary for Vermont Digger— I am Vermont Broke (August 21, 2016) and I received so many comments I wrote the book titled Vanishing Vermonters, Loss of a Rural Culture. My thrust was to interview Vermonters (24 of them), who live in small Vermont communities and, in a short profile illustrated with a portrait, identify in words who they are, what they do, and what their life and hope is. I then recorded their words—“ What do you like or not like about Vermont and how is it affecting your life?” I also included other photos that were a document of our culture as it twists its way to the future.

Took a while to figure out how to research and write for I was doing two stories in one—a profile on the subject and a digitally recorded interview. It took much mulling about in my muddied mind to translate it so a person’s character became a portrait of our time.

In the fall of 2016 pneumonia dropped in to say HI! and burrowed into my chest. One doctor told me I might not survive six months. “Jeezum Crow,” I said, “I have a lot of work to finish!” Then this hospital found out my pacemaker was dying and if I died in their bailiwick they could be sued for malpractice. So they shipped me back to Burlington where my coronary doctor hung out. Good. I went there and a young Indian doctor listened to my heart and said, “What’s this? What’s this! You’re not going to die, and ran off to get the coronary doctor. I have A-Fib and I had a heart attack but what they were concerned with was my tin heart. The shroud around my heart had calcified and when I exercised the heart couldn’t expand and I ran out of breath. My cardiologist told me that I had that ‘tin heart” for ten years so what else is new and I would have it for a number of years.

Kim Crady-Smith, Green Mountain Bookstore

sa book to do, $500 to my At the time I had the book to complete, $500 in the bank, and pneumonia fooling with a tin man’s heart. Not good. My daughters kicked in and sent me to live in a small apartment in Florida. Sun, warmth, sea level oxygen, no snow to shovel—I regained my health in a month and spent two and a half months writing Vanishing. In April I returned to Vermont, set up a Kickstarter campaign that raised enough money to publish the book. Wanted to print the book in Vermont to make it home-grown.

Paul Hannon Master Mechanic N. Randolph

When I returned to Vermont, I took off three days and then began a harrowing experience with the printer. They did not know how to print a fine art book with duo tone black and white photographs. I showed then how—11 days I sat down with their tech man. He learned. Then, after I set the price for the book based on my bid and notified the book stores, the printer sent me a large bill for the time I taught their techie and add-ons that were never approved or signed off on. Then they said I could not pick up any books until the new charges were paid, although I had paid the original cost for printing. I had to retain a lawyer to change their train of thought.

All that led me to say never again would I have a fine art duotone book printed in Vermont or America. Too expensive or too shoddy and sometimes both, The Italians do superb work at fair prices. So do the Chinese, if you have a printing expert, or yourself, looking over their shoulder.

Enough! Now to the future and what I learned after self publishing five coffee tables books. The printing and binding prices for a fine art book with duotone have escalated to the point where a small regional publisher can barely survive. I had wound myself into a messy ball, as a photographer and writer who never wanted to be a publisher but yearned for perfection in my books.

I stopped full stride, stamped my feet, did an about face and went straight back to where I came from…photography. I don’t want to spend hours wrestling with a sentence or paragraph, sitting for days in front of a computer, taping interviews or doing heavy research and dealing with printers. No. I want to be outside; I sit for hours watching the light change. Sometimes I don’t take a photograph but return when the wind and sun and sky tells me to. Other times I am looking at the map of a person’s face and translate onto an image what their face and surroundings say about the life they live.

Heath family and their Phoenix Band Saw, about 150 years old.

So back to the camera and the purity of taking a picture that gives me goose bumps. Yes I specialize in black and white and yes I love black and white as a way to go inward into a person’s psyche and to weave in the surroundings my people exist in.

Here I am. I have given up books. I sold my Airstream and re-designed my gallery and hung large prints in black and white and a few silver gelatins made by me in my darkroom, which I still have. Raised my prices too.

Have I gone retro? You bet! I have a Rollei and Leica like I used in Europe 62 years ago. Maybe you could call me a half breed. I have film and digital cameras and a 55 inch monitor on the wall in the gallery to display my archive. When I am trapped by a deadline, I use digital. When I have the time, it is film. I’m AC-DC that way although I lean towards the hand-crafted print, either processed by me in the darkroom or created digitally by my alter ego, in this case Ward Rice, my printer who has a studio in Stowe, Vermont.

So the last bridge is burned. Forward!

The new Gallery in Colbyville. Monitor is facing chairs.

Hey, eventually my website will display on my gallery monitor the best photos taken over 68 years.Lots of work to do! peter@petermillerphotography.com

]]>http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2018/07/30/finally-this-woodchuck-is-digging-his-way-out-of-a-deep-dark-hole/feed/32142A VICIOUS, KILLING FARM FIREhttp://www.petermillerphotography.com/2018/04/20/a-vicious-killing-farm-fire/
http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2018/04/20/a-vicious-killing-farm-fire/#commentsFri, 20 Apr 2018 04:53:21 +0000http://www.petermillerphotography.com/?p=2094A year and a half I spent, in a fury of concentration, creating Vanishing Vermonters. Some say it is my best book, more journalistic then documentary. I don’t care, I’m relieved that it is a postpartum factoid. It pales about what I have to say:

****************

Whatmatters, in this harsh year, what stabbed my heart and psyche, was the death of Rosina Wallace’s farm by a violent,wind-blasted fire. She is my neighbor and friend; her farm is a couple of miles up the hill along a dirt road from which the town of Waterbury inelegantly removed some elegant maples.

The fire was a killer. Rosina lost 23 cows and heifers—I don’t want to think about that—her tractors ad mowers, shit kicker and hay wagons, all milking equipment, various tools. Not only was the farm immolated but also two adjacent homes, Rosina’s and the farmhouse where her brother Wally lived.

Bills, letters and postcards, snapshots of visiting children, tin types and large framed black and white photographs, antique furniture, an organ, clothes, family jewelry, records of life on the farm—all turned to ash. The old farmhouse decorated in a Victorian style where her brother lived is a wisp of smoke, an evanescent memory of an old cook stove and teapot on the north wall of the kitchen, hand-planed cupboards, large framed prints of Wallace anecestors beginning with Lavina and Sidney who bought the farm in 1866. Scrap books reflected the century and a half the Wallaces worked this hillside farm as they scythed, collected hay by horse pulled wagons. Who pruned the fruit trees? Were the peaches large and juicy? Did someone make strawberry and rhubarb pie? Did they wear the same clothes for weddings and funerals?
What was the recipe for the jugs of switchel that was brought out by wagon, on hot summer days, to the wolf tree in the center of a mowing that shaded man and horses during lunch? Who? Who called the cows in before Rosina during those 152 years before the fire lit up their farm and seen by those living across the valley, 10 miles by car? Did Lavina help with the milking when the first cows were being milked? Bet she did.

I saw and heard nothing the night of the fire but in the morning we all knew. I drove up the steep hill and headed north on Blush Hill where a road sign warned of crossing cattle. I turned into driveway where the farm is—used to be. Now—devastation. A Cat excavator was compacting scorched and twisted metal into piles topped by a tractor upside down, its belly exposed, waiting for evisceration during this cruel month. Another tractor, a soot-black skeleton, was perched above another tangle of metal, holding its shape and dignity. My eyes swept over the detritus of this farm, nothing but ash and mud, warped metal and charcoal-skin barn beams. Tears ran down my cheeks.

I photographed lightly, mostly the tractors, a large manure pile with the trestle leaning over it like a preying mantis, behind the devastation a birch tree winter-naked but standing tall, as if pinned to the summit of snow-covered Mt. Mansfield prominent in the sky line 12 miles distant. The side of the tree facing the fire was scorched black and the bark was skinned at the base.

*************************

In 2000 I wrote and published Vermont Farm Women. Rosina’s story filled the first four pages with a profile and five photographs. That night I reread the text.

You know, revisiting that story sloughed away the tension and sorrow the fire built within me. Here was this farmwoman in love with her heritage —her farm and its cows, cats, birds, wild predators and memories of her life, her family and her ancestors. I smiled when I read it. Here is an excerpt that I wrote during the summer of 2000:

Rosina Wallace cups her hands over her mouth, lifts her face towards the pasture and hayfields that slope up to the afternoon sun and lets out with a string of “Here Boss!” Her call reverberates over the 225 acres of her farm and “my critters” , as she calls her Jersey herd, line up and head down the cow path to the barn. It’s time for milking.

Sometimes, in early summer, she searches the upper pasture, looking for a calf she suspected one of her cows dropped in the woods. She walks the hedgerow of birch and cherry trees that shade a stone wall and then follows a cow path that twists into the woods. She found the afterbirth, but no calf.

“Once a calf was born and didn’t come out for two days. It was feeding on its own. One smart calf, to avoid the coyotes.”

She spotted a barn cat prowling the stonewall, hunting chipmunks. “You stay up here,” she addressed the cat, “and the coyotes will get you.”

Overhead the repetitive wing whistle of the snipe echoed down. They were barely visible in their dives and dips.

“Mr. Snipe,” you are having a lot of fun up there.” The snipe appear in the evening. The red tailed hawk circles the fields during the day and in the early spring twilight the woodcock yo-yos up and down in mating flights. Woodchucks now burrow in stonewalls rather then on a patch of hayfield with a good view where they stood on their haunches and whistled to their neighbors.

Rosina passes the outcropping of rock in the hayfield where she played as her father hayed . From her rubber boots up to her denim jacket, Rosina appears sturdy but trim. On hot days a straw hat filters through the weave and flecks her face with sun light. Her eyes are as dark as her curly hair and a smile is on her face more often than not. There is a healthy sensuality and energy within this farmer. She sure looks a lot happier than her great grandmother Lavina Wallace. In fact, it was the Wallace women who kept the farm going, says Rosina, who had a copious scrapbook of photographs.

“Sidney and Lavina Wallace bought the farm in 1866 but Sidney was such a poor money manager they probably would have lost the farm. Lavina had a tight hold on the purse strings.

“My grandfather James ran a good farm with fruit crops, a sugarbush, cows, chickens and pigs but he died in the flu epidemic of 1917. Grandmother Florence used the insurance money to pay off the mortgage. She was a little woman but she kept it going and all seven of her children graduated from college.

“Only my father Keith came back to the farm after college. I was a schoolteacher and dad asked me if I wanted to farm, as he was going to run for the Legislature. I quit and came back to the farm in 1980.”

“Farming is tiring and hard work but I grew up on this farm. I love the view but that is not as much fun as scratching a cow behind the ears. I wouldn’t farm if I had to farm anywhere else. This place is free and clean with no mortgages. Developers offer more money than I can imagine for my property but I wouldn’t do it. This is roots, it’s family, and I think it is an okay thing to do, to feed people, in spite of the fact they don’t appreciate it because they think food comes from a grocery store. I am a Yankee Vermonter. I am high blooded. I have the right to be. I was born to be. So I prefer to hold onto this farm as long as I can.”

Keith, Rosina’s father, was famous as a farmer, legislator and story teller. He taught his daughter how to raise calves, care for a sick cows and make the soil more productive. He also taught her to survive on very little but most important to keep her cows healthy.

In 1964 her father had arthritis in the back and was on 12 aspirins a day. In 1995 he was diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer. “It was probably the darned aspirin and coffee he drank,” Rosina said. “He used to scoop cream out of the milk cooler for his coffee

“He died sitting in his chair by the cook stove because he felt he was home. That was the second of June, 1995”

Help Rosina and Wally rebuild their life. www.Youcaring.com is a crowd-funding web site where you can search by entering Rosina. Also, if you want a copy of Vermont Farm Women, with the story of Rosina, I have a few left. Peter Miller, peter@petermillerphotography.com

]]>http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2018/04/20/a-vicious-killing-farm-fire/feed/22094Finally! Vanishing Vermonters…Loss of a Rural Culture is Out, in my hands and being Shipped!http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/10/11/finally-vanishing-vermonters-loss-of-a-rural-culture-is-out-in-my-hands-and-being-shipped/
http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/10/11/finally-vanishing-vermonters-loss-of-a-rural-culture-is-out-in-my-hands-and-being-shipped/#commentsWed, 11 Oct 2017 15:52:49 +0000http://www.petermillerphotography.com/?p=1848Glory be!. After two months the printer and binder finished their job and Vanishing Vermonters is in my hands. Wow! I received the first copies on Friday Oct. 6 and immediately delivered 200 to bookstores that ordered early and now I am in the process of mailing out 93 books to Kickstarter donors who requested the gift of the soft cover (you 33 who ordered the hardcover, that beautiful book will be sent next week if they keep their promise of finishing the binding.)

I started this book in the late summer of 2015. So many Vermonters read my comments on changes in Vermont since I took my first photograph of a Vermonter in 1950 to 2015, when I published A Lifetime of Vermont People. I received emails, visits and letters from Vermonters who couldn’t afford to live in Vermont due to the high cost of taxes and energy. Some sold, some couldn’t find a buyer. One visitor said he felt violent due to the onus of permits and taxes. Another told me he cried after reading my book and realizing how much we have lost as Vermont loses its culture. Well, here it is:

Available in Independent bookstores and directly from my website (Vermonters include 6% sales tax but shipping is free). Use Pay Pal, a credit card, or send a check to Peter Miller, Vanishing Vermonters, 20 Crossroad, Waterbury, VT 05676.

This book is different. The photos are more realistic than pretty, the interviews are about what rural Vermonters like and dislike about our government and also the sadness they feel at losing our rural culture.

I think it is an important book as the rural Vermonter is, well…ignored might be the best word…by our government.

http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/02/21/vanishing-vermonter-loss-of-a-rural-culture/feed/01611Vanishing Vermonters…Loss of a Rural Culture by Peter Millerhttp://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/02/20/vanishing-vermonter-loss-of-a-rural-culture-by-peter-miller/
http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/02/20/vanishing-vermonter-loss-of-a-rural-culture-by-peter-miller/#commentsMon, 20 Feb 2017 21:03:24 +0000http://www.petermillerphotography.com/?p=1630Hard, hard at work. I have written 9 profiles, 12 to go and then the Foreword and Afterword, my, but, take a look at this documentary created by Rob Hunter of Frog Hollow. It’s all about what I do, that is to write and photograph, particularly my latest book, Vanishing Vermonter. Our culture is changing and the people who made this state are moving away, passing over, or just completely overlooked. I went out and photographed these people and others and let them talk and tell their story about their lives and what they think is happening to Vermont. The documentary will first air on Vermont Public Television and here is the schedule:

Streaming available: 2/22/2017-2/22/2020

Tuesday, Feb 21, 7 p.m. on Vermont PBS

Wednesday, Feb 22, 1 a.m. on Vermont PBS

Wednesday, Feb 22, 9 p.m. on Vermont PBS Plus

Saturday, Feb 25, 2:30 p.m. on Vermont PBS Plus

Sunday, Feb 26, 2 p.m. on Vermont PBS

Each profile is accompanied with a photograph. Here are a few of the Vermonters, my cousins, who are in this book, to be published this June.

Kim Crady-Smith, Green Mountain Bookstore

]]>http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/02/20/vanishing-vermonter-loss-of-a-rural-culture-by-peter-miller/feed/21630Happy Birthday to Mehttp://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/01/06/happy-birthday-to-me/
http://www.petermillerphotography.com/2017/01/06/happy-birthday-to-me/#commentsFri, 06 Jan 2017 17:02:16 +0000http://www.petermillerphotography.com/?p=1580So many happy birthdays. Yes, today, at 1.45 AM, 1934 I took my first breath. Oh yes, I am a flatlander who came to this state in 1947 with my mother, brother and sister. I knew the first day I was here that I had found my home. I felt it in my soul, I saw it in the sky and in the farmers who were my neighbors and I learned to love watching the clouds, snow drift down, skiing, hunting, fishing. Heaven! But deep within I had this feeling of Vermont, a sense of expanding freedom, of woods and streams and community. What a wonderful beginning.

This past year was a tough one. I saw, over the past 10 years, the collapse of the professional photograpy business, particularly for the international licensing of photographs through agencies. They changed the business model to the point we lost our income. Getty, who now has 17 million images in their library, bought up some of my back up agencies and began the royalty free business. This knockout punch was followed by the digital revolution and the smart phone and soon everyone was a photographer.

Many of those affected turned to another business or started seminars for serious amateurs and set up photo tours to distant destinations. I myself closed my website selling stock and set up, with the help of neighbor John Hadden, a new site directed to selling my best and iconic images, and mostly black and white, to collectors and people interested in my style of shooting. It is working, slowly, and is evolving. In the meantime, THANK YOU SO MUCH ALL YOU AT THE LOCAL FOOD SHELF. YOU ARE GRACIOUS AND SEEM TO REALIZE IT IS TOUGH TIMES FOR VERMONTERS AND US CREATIVE TYPE.

Yes, it is time to move ahead and because of the many Vermonters who wrote me, visited and called because of what I said in A Lifetime of Vermont People it finally zinged in my soul and I realized I had to do a book about this, which will be out by June and I call VANISHING VERMONTERS…LOSS OF A RURAL CULTURE. I have photographed and interviewed 20 people and have a few more to go. So this year I juggled doing the book and trying to survive in this expensive state. Very rough for most of us creatives.

Things came to a head this December; probably I pushed myself too hard so I ended up in the hospital with a nasty pneumonia virus. I am out now, on the mend, but it will take a while. My daughters, God Bless Them, have rented me a small apartment in Vero Beach, Florida, where I will exercise, get lots of sun, and important to me, write my book. So, with much help I have a plan, and I think this will be an important book. You will be reading about it on my blog. The Vermont books I have written are what I am supposed to do in this life time. My calling, that’s what it is.
Take care, all of you and thank you for remembering me. Peter

Fred Tuttle holding a photo of his father holding a photo of his father and grandfather. The photo and story is in Miller’s latest book, A Lifetime of Vermont People

It gives me succor to remember Fred Tuttle and the era in which he was the farmer-elect in the movie by John O’brien: The Man with the Plan. Fred died 13 years ago, give or take a few months. He made us laugh and we loved him for what he was, a simple farmer who loved to kiss babies, girls, woman and grandmothers. I was at his funeral in Tunbridge and I reported on it. Very few papers ran it, but VT Digger recently brought back Fred with that article. You know, I have met Vermonters who never heard of Fred! We have to keep his spirit, and that of Vermont as it has been, alive. Read on:

****************************

Fred Tuttle, dairy farmer, actor, politician and Vermont’s most beloved citizen, died of a heart attack on October 4 in Tunbridge, Vermont. He was 84.

Fred starred in the 1996 film Man with a Plan, written and directed by his neighbor, John O’Brien. It was a spoof on politics, how a Vermont dairy farmer, played by Fred, ran for Congress with the slogan of “I’ve spent my whole life in the barn, now I just want to spend a little time in the House.” With a budget of $16, the film’s hero went on to defeat the incumbent Congressman by one vote.

Two years later Fred ran for real against Jack McMullen in the Senate Republican Primary and, after a series of hilarious debates, defeated McMullen. Fred then endorsed the Democratic candidate, Senator Patrick Leahy and retired to his hillside home.

*******************************

It was one of those soft Indian Summer days. The early morning fog lifted to bare blue-hazed mountains under a sky unblemished with clouds. The temperature climbed slowly into the high seventies but the shade was fresh as spring water. It was a day to live easy, but this Thursday, the ninth day of October, Vermont’s most benevolent and beautiful month, was Fred Tuttle’s funeral.

I had put on my only suit, which I hadn’t worn for a decade, my black shoes, a pale pink shirt and a muted paisley tie left over from a time past. Tunbridge, Fred’s home town, is about 40 miles from Waterbury, where I live. I drove to Randolph and took the short cut, over the mountain, past some rolling fields of corn stalks being chopped into silage, then into the woods and down past a landscape of farms into Tunbridge.

The Tunbridge Congregational Church is typical of most small villages that were never wealthy. A simple steeple punctuated the center of town. The interior was plain with graceful discipline. Judy Lewis—it’s always a woman at these funerals— was playing the organ that had a deep voice that was constant, solemn but respectful as attendants ushered in the mourners. On the left aisle were seated friends of Fred. Among them was Senator Patrick Leahy, who defeated Fred in the 1987 Senatorial campaign (well, Fred, after he won the primary, deferred to the Senator, on the advice of his wife Dottie—“THERE IS NO WAY YOU ARE GOING TO WASHINGTON!”, she once screamed at him when he was toying with the idea as we sat at the dining room table. He gave me a sly smile and I could see he liked, in his own way, to have Dottie lecture him. Also seated in the church, in the pew in front of Senator Leahy, was John O’Brien, who had the brilliance to recognize that his neighbor down the road was just the right person to star in his film The Man With the Plan. Next to him was Jack Rowell, associate producer to The Man With the Plan, woodchuck photographer and fly fisherman, whose photographs sparkle with warmth and humor, and who traveled and documented Fred’s years as a performance artist.

Filling the right side of the aisle were members of the family. There were more elderly women then men; their husbands had already died. A few men had the bronzed healthy look of farmers who spent the last month on their tractors, haying and chopping. Others were white faced, their bodies crumpled, waiting out their time, and they walked with difficulty. A few wore open collar shirts with suspenders, as Fred dressed. One elderly man had on high patent leather shoes, the creases in the toe of the shoe coated c with dust collected from years in a closet. Two wore mismatched coats and trousers. In the front row was seated Fred’s wife Dottie and Fred’s children, some of them adopted, some direct descendents, but all part of the fabric of the Tuttle family which is thick in these parts. In 1798 the first Tuttles settled in Tunbridge. In 1872 Fred Herman Tuttle, Fred’s grandfather, bought the Tuttle hillside farm, which still remains in the family. 205 years is sure enough time to spread the Tuttle roots.

Fred had two great moments in his 84 year life. The first was as a soldier in World War II. Attached to a combat engineering company, he landed in Normandy on D Day plus 7 and was sent to LeMans when the Germans were just vacating it; Fred could still smell cabbage soup. His unit constructed a bridge in 36 hours (“How long does it take them in Vermont to put up a bridge? A year?) but he found time and the directions to visit a house of pleasure. Downstairs he left his helmet and cartridge belt and rifle (“I shouldn’t had done that.”) walked upstairs and made love for the first time.

“Guess what, Peter?” and he leaned forward, the glint gleamed in his eyes, the famous Tuttle smile began to crease his face , as he held up his hand with the thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. “For one cigarette!. That’s all! One cigarette!” and he sat back and his face expanded into a huge Cheshire Cat smile.

Fred first visited Paris the day after its liberation and was overwhelmed with his reception, so much so that he volunteered to patrol a section of pipe line that lay north of the city and through which flowed fuel for the tanks and trucks on the front line. He was there until the war ended, and his trips to the City of Light were numerous.

“Peter, The Paris women. They were … beautiful. Beautiful! There was red carpet on the floor, long bars, they served us drinks, we sat in sofas…” He was referring to his hangouts on Boulevard Clichy, which he knew as Pigalle.

Fred returned from France not being shot at, and not shooting at others, but seeing too many dead bodies and almost drowning while returning to the States on a troop ship that was caught in a storm. The hold was full of water and Fred kept his head and that of a stow-away dog above water. He always liked animals.

When he was discharged Fred rode the train to Randolph, the nearest train station to Tunbridge. “There were two pretty women in the station, when I got off” remembered Fred, “and they didn’t even look at me.” That night Fred milked the cows, as he did daily for the next 40 years.

David Wolfe, the church’s minister, climbed the pulpit and gave a humorous but compassionate portrait of Fred as “…Perhaps my most reluctant parishioner…”. Fred’s son recalled his younger years and how he liked to hunt without killing anything and the importance of Fred as a father to his natural and adopted children. John O’Brien described Fred’s natural talent as an actor and mentioned some of the funnier moments he spent with Fred. After years of anonymity and nights and mornings looking at the hind end of cows, days of reaping and sowing and the never ending job of cutting and splitting fire wood, Fred savored stardom as he did ice cream.

45,000 videos of The Man With the Plan, about a farmer who decided to run for Congress on the slogan, “I’ve spent my whole life in the barn, now I just want to spend a little time in the House.” were sold. In the movie, Fred’s character won by one vote and stole the hearts of all who saw the movie. The movie was whimsical, gently satirical and so very, very Vermont. Fred became the icon of a Vermont farmer—he had an accent that almost needed translation, an honest mind, an ability to express himself with as few words as possible, sweetness in his affability. There was no pretense in Fred and he said what he thought. He was just….Fred.

At the service Maria Lamson sang Simple Gifts, in a sweet voice and Priscilla Farnham gave an stirring rendition of Amazing Grace. Fred lay in an open casket at the front of the church. His glasses were in place and he looked peaceful, his eyes closed, as if he was remembering something from the past, and would suddenly open them and start telling a story. His hands were clasped together and on his belly lay his cap with FRED spelled on it (As he said in the movie, it is an acronym : F for friendly, R for renewable, E for extraterrestrial, D for dinky).

At the end of the service I walked up the aisle to say good by to Fred and I thought of the last time I saw him, a few weeks before. I was camped on his property as I attended the Tunbridge Fair. I brought him a copy of a revised edition of Vermont People with photos and stories on him and Joe, his father. When I left Fred he was standing in the doorway in his striped pajamas, hand on the half opened door, peering out at me, through his thick glasses, like an owl. He flipped his hand up and waggled it in a short wave. It was one of those photographs I never took, but an image that will stay with me all my life.

In 1989 I first met Fred when I came over to photograph his father Joe, who was then 93. At the same time I photographed Fred as he leaned on his cane and gave me a penetrating glance through his big glasses. We didn’t talk much but he reminded me of a Mr. Magoo. His father’s photograph and story appeared next year in the book. Every so often I would visit Tunbridge and drop in to see Fred and Joe and, after Joe died, I visited with Fred and Dottie.

When I was updating Vermont People, in 1998, I photographed Fred in the same pose as I photographed his father, holding his father’s photograph who was holding his father’s photograph. The photograph was taken in front of the Tuttle barn that was about to fall down in the movie Man with the Plan. It really did fall down and needed to be reconstructed.

John O’Brien asked Fred to run in the Senate GOP primary against a Massachusetts millionaire and Fred, never bashful, agreed. His opponent was Jack McMullen who had moved to Vermont from Massachusetts because, we assumed, he had political ambitions. Everyone called him a carpetbagger and the election and the debate drew howls of laughter and nationwide political coverage. Fred appeared on the Today Show and shared laughs with Jack Leno. He met beautiful women in Hollywood and New York and kissed them all with the same gusto that he kissed babies while campaigning.

The most famous debate between Tuttle and McMullen, hinged on one question Fred asked Jack McMullen and it had nothing to do with politics.

“How many teats does a cow have?”

“Six,” answered McMullen.

He lost the election to a farmer who milked by hand and who campaigned with a few dollars and won 54% of the vote. He supported his opponent Senator Leahy in the senatorial campaign and capped his campaign fund at $251, representing a dollar from each Vermont town. He went over the fund when Vermonters, mostly children, donated $600. His biggest expense was for renting two portable johns at a fund raising dinner at his farm. At the end of the campaign he donated his “PAC” money to the Lincoln Library, which was damaged by flood, and the Tunbridge Library. Even after endorsing Senator Leahy, he still won 24% of the vote.

Fred and Dottie lived in a small white house a few hundred yards from the farm, where his daughter Debra and Sean now live. The front door opened into a shed, that usually had in the corner a basket of vegetables Fred had pulled from the garden . Another door opened into the kitchen. Dottie kept her house neat and prim, with flowers in the windowsill. The cats had taken over the sofa. The dining room table was in front of the stove and sink. On the table were bottles of pills Fred was taking for his heart, his eyes, his diabetes, rheumatism. We sat and talked. Fred would fire up his accent, thicker than grade B commercial grade maple syrup.

“How come people don’t visit anymore? I don’t know anyone in town. Why does everyone go so fast? Isn’t it just a mess in Washington? Look at our taxes, why we used to pay taxes with our maple syrup sales. What’s happening to our state Peter? Everything is going to hell ain’t it?”

We digressed onto the origin of the stone huts on his property, which may be Celtic, and moved on to farming.

“I sold the cows in 1984,” Fred remembered, looking up at the ceiling. “On Friday they picked up the cows and on Monday I had prostrate surgery. Worst thing can happen to anybody is when they have to sell their cows, you know.”

But most of all Fred remembered the political campaign, the interviews and appearances and people he met, and the debates and campaigning he did in the 1998 primary. He peered at me over his glasses and those blue eyes gleamed and that wide, wide smile lit up and he confided, almost in a whisper.

“Peter, you know… these have been the happiest years of my life. The happiest!”

At 77 years Fred changed lanes from a retired dairy farmer to a performance artist who crossed the reality barrier to become a politician and Vermont’s leading citizen.

This past summer I had a booth at six Vermont county fairs, promoting my books Vermont People and Vermont Farm Women. I had made a poster of the photograph I used in the book—Fred holding the family photos—and displayed on an easel. Almost everyone who walked by, it didn’t matter which fair, looked at the photos, smiled, and said “Fred! There’s Fred! Then they would ask me how he was. Fred Tuttle is Vermont’s most recognizable citizen, outside of presidential candidate Howard Dean, but much more popular than the ex-governor.

After the funeral we walked a few yards to the town hall for a reception. On one table were newspaper clippings, posters, old and new family shots and other mementos of Fred Tuttle as a young man, a farmer, father, actor and politician. We sat on long tables. Baloney and cheese and egg salad sandwiches filled a large platter beside bowls and plates of pickles and some dips, squares of Cabot cheese, five flavors of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and fresh, home made cookies. A big punch bowl had a label stuck on it that read “Fred’s Punch” I suspect it was vanilla ice cream, milk and ginger ale swirled together. We renewed acquaintances and told stories about Fred.

It was a good funeral—Fred had a fast passing after a long life of hard work with all the desserts at the end. He won our hearts and always, when I think of him I smile and say to myself… Frrredddd… the word drawn out and flowing as sweet as honey. I enjoyed so much visiting with him, sitting at the table, having a coffee and a chat, listening to Dottie’s rants to keep him in control, or going to a nickel-a-plate fund raiser at the Tuttle farm with all his neighbors. Fred was fun. He was witty without knowing it. He had a plastic face and such a glint in his eye. He had no guile. He was, and I say this as a great compliment, a simple Vermonter with a wonderful smile and compelling charisma.

I left the funeral reception early and drove my car through the covered bridge that was rebuilt after the flood a few years back washed it downstream, and headed up the mountain . On the left, not a mile from the bridge and overlooking the valley is the cemetery where Fred is buried. An iron fence surrounds it. Fred was buried in a private, family burial while we were enjoying the warm afternoon sun and munching baloney sandwiches.

A backhoe sat idle in the cemetery as two men shoveled dirt into Fred’s grave. Dottie was then at the reception, seated at a long table with friends and relatives. Daughter Debra was just beginning to retain her tears. I wondered, as I drove slowly past the cemetery and up the mountain, on this clear, beautiful Indian Summer day, if we were not only burying Fred but also the character that made Vermont what it was, what we have cherished and loved.

It’s that time of year and after the second frost I pick the Macs and Braeburns, skin them with my old red Rube Goldberg peeler. Out comes my dinged Chinese cleaver and I slice the flesh neat. The Joy of Cooking is at my side to make sure I have some sense of honor in assembling this pie.

I’m a barehanded Gonzo. First cinnamon is dusted like a sand storm on the apples, followed by eight twirls of the nutmeg mill. Kate’s butter (I splurged), I cut up in small chunks and mix it in. Then I add hot little cinnamon candies I bought at the Vermont Country Store when I was passing through. There are about the size of a blueberry—hey, that’s a good idea! I go in the freezer, grab a handful of blueberries and dump them in. I’m hand diving in the bowl, turning over the apples and all those spices, and start licking my fingers. Hmm, it needs three chunks of pineapple and I just happen to have them frozen away.

I only made one other apple pie in my life and it was mostly a failure so to play it safe I bought the crust, rolled it out on the counter, let it warm up, and put half of it in a nine inch aluminum pie pan. I had heated the oven up to 450 and put the crust and pan in the oven to stiffen it so it won’t get soggy from all the juices. You know, next time I will make my own crust. I just heard of a woman who used vodka to give her crust a little special oomph.

Come to think of it, time for a drink—bourbon cut with the juice from the pie, ice and a cherry. Lots of it. HMMM… Jim Beam you’re a friend of mine.

A good hit on my type of Old Fashioned swirls my imagination. Something is missing. AHHH! My memory goes back to the apple sauce I make with habanero flakes that Dodie, my daughter, sends me from London, England. Dodie and Fred’s Taqueria near Portobello is the best Mexican restaurant in England.

I open the tin of habanero flakes, dump a bunch in the palm of hand, take a pinch and sprinkle and mix it in the pie. Give it a taste. Hmmm. Another pinch, this one bigger and I turn over the mixture.

Another scurry through the cupboard and I find some dried currants in a bag. Dumped them all in. Then I took a pint of very black no-name maple syrup from Cold Hollow Cider Mill and did a couple of dozy-dos with the bottle. Then another before the turnover. . .dumped in two tablespoons of cornstarch, a couple of shakes from the vanilla bottle.

Then I took the bowl with the apples mixed with all those special little spices, covered it with a dish towel, and put it in the refrigerator overnight to hang out with my habanero and chipotle applesauce and that big sauce pan of soup-stew that turned out awful. Don’t ever use blue cheese for anything except eating blue cheese (I call it Roquefort). Some like it on steak but they taste with forked tongues.

Twenty-four hours later I pulled the pie pan out of the fridge, removed the dishcloth covering the pie innards and took a taste.

DAMN! A bit too biting with habanero. I can take it but others might not. Well, nothing wrong with that.

In the oven at 450 for 10 minutes, timed with my I Phone, than 35 minutes at 350. And I let it cool down in the oven.

Bought a half gallon of Blue Bunny Vanilla ice cream made in Iowa. It costs $3.99, less than half of Hagen Daz or Ben and Jerry’s and made with eggs, cream, vanilla, milk and skim milk that’s what gives it an incredible lightness of being. Ice cream idiots from hot states don’t smother themselves with high butter fat milk from bag-heavy Jersey cows.

I taste the pie. I buttered and sprinkled milk and brown sugar on the crust and it was good and true would remember Ernest, but he ate a bland pie on the Big Two Hearted River.

Oh Dear, still quite a Habanero bite! I circumcise out a triangle, dump on the ice cream and taste. PERFECT! The ice cream dulls just enough of the Habanero overload.

BUT…but…is this pie darkly dyed by blueberries and no grade black maple syrup… is it an apple pie, or did I make a… Bridge on the River Kwai pie, more suitable for Colonel Saito’s palate?

“WHAT HAVE I DONE???” I pick up the pie and move to the disposal and then a jolt hits my body. I almost keel over.

Hey, what this pie needs the next time is a couple of slugs of dark Jamaican rum, and a froth of eggnog instead of ice cream!

Midnight, 8 November. Stars so bright overhead, the big dipper low on the horizon. A frost layed down coating of ice on the deck railing. A black night save for the hope lit in the stars.

It is election day and there is a clenching in my body as if I chugalugged a bottle of anxiety. Sadness at what has become of the country I love. I have walked in the path of beauty in all things. Now there is this squeeze within, the desperate foreboding that this election has changed what America and I have stood for. The passion and pride for my country brought tears to my eyes in 1954 when the Liberty steamed into New York Harbor and passed the Statue of Liberty, will it be water boarded out of us?

The anger and hatred that raised the hairs on the back of my neck on that day spent in Dachau in 1982…it is back, this Dachau disease.

A moral compass directed my life but now the foundation of my soul has been crushed, stamped upon, swore at.

That’s my mantra, part of a beautiful poem of the Navajo people. One walk this fall snatched that experience. I posted it on Facebook, but thought it should be here…

Some think I’m a good photographer but what I really have is an eye for the weather. Couple of weeks ago, in the afternoon, I noticed a fast change in the temperature. Sky was roiled with clouds coming in from Canada ; a patch of blue exposed itself momentarily in the north. I knew prime time could happen, so I quickly drove to Gregg Hill to a scene I have photographed in different seasons, parked in Lyon’s driveway, set the camera up on a tripod and waited out this small squall. Rain sputtered, I stayed under the hatch of the car, protecting my small camera, a Sony, from a wet demise. Then the rain stopped, the clouds swirled and a crack in the sky opened and the sun broke through like a spotlight, brightened and focused on the center of the view of a pasture in front of me turning it into brilliant color. Camera up, tripod anchored, I began shooting as a flock of turkeys squabbled through my photos (Damn–the turkeys were not in position when the searchlight was illuminating the pasture.). I had about two minutes of prime time before the sun was extinguished by dark clouds. Went home exhilarated.